


These Are the Nights and the Lights That We Fade In

by TheGirlWithThePuffHat



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Author Is A Fabulous Killjoy, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Live Together (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Cold, Crowley Contemplates Stuff, Crowley DOESN’T CRY this time, Crowley Hates the Cold (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Cuddling & Snuggling, Cuddly Crowley (Good Omens), Cute, Cute Ending, Established Relationship, Finley Cannot Tag, Gentle Kissing, Happy, Happy Crowley (Good Omens), I Wrote This While Listening To Fall Out Boy, Internal Monologue, Kissing, M/M, Memories, No Plot/Plotless, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Post-Apocalypse, Quote: We're On Our Own Side (Good Omens), Sentimental Crowley (Good Omens), Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed, Short & Sweet, Sleep, Sleepy Cuddles, Sleepy Kisses, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Stargazing, Stars, Sweet, Symbolism, Tired Crowley (Good Omens), and crowley thinks about life, crowley and aziraphale snuggling, do you guys...actually read all the tags, gets kinda mushy about it, he’s soft and beautiful and we love him, i wrote this while listening to black veil brides, i wrote this while listening to my chemical romance, if you do i admire your dedication, i’m kinda curious now, kissing and talking at the same time, like he’s so in love i’m drowning it’s great, must be losing my grip on sanity or something, no beta we saunter vaguely downward like crowley, oh wow i’m actually writing a fic without a love confession or a first kiss, post-nahpocalypse, references to lotsa different songs? Like there’s lyrics and titles in the fic just...randomly?, soft, still can’t tag though, that kills me, that’s it that’s the fic, that’s what i call it in any case, they say I love you a lot, title is a my chemical romance lyric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25823704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGirlWithThePuffHat/pseuds/TheGirlWithThePuffHat
Summary: Crowley, lying awake, thinks about how far they’ve come, how lucky he is to be there, and the difference between warm and cold.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 45





	These Are the Nights and the Lights That We Fade In

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I’m Finley, asexual and genderfluid and obsessed with Good Omens. Nothing’s changing there. So. By my standards, this is pretty short, and I actually managed to write a fic where their relationship is already established!?!? Like what?
> 
> Title is from The World Is Ugly, by My Chemical Romance. I love this song. It’s sweet. Relevant lyrics included below, as usual. 
> 
> There are references to… multiple songs in this fic. Lyrics and even a title. I’ll list those at the end, and if there are any relevant lyrics in them. :)
> 
> Crowley is soft. Crowley is very much in love. Crowley is a mushy, sentimental sweetheart and I just… needed to write something like this. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

_ These are the nights and the lights that we fade in _

_ These are the words but the words aren’t coming out _

_ They burn ‘cause they are hard to say _

_ For every failing sun, there's a morning after _

_ Though I'm empty when you go _

_ I just wanted you to know _

_ That the world is ugly _

_ But you're beautiful to me _

_ Are you thinking of me _

_ Like I'm thinking of you _

_ I would say I'm sorry, though _

_ Though I really need to go _

_ I just wanted you to know _

> __ _ —The World is Ugly, by My Chemical Romance _

* * *

There was snow outside, cold wind and cold moonlight, and cold-hearted people jostling each other on the cold sidewalks as they breathed in malice and breathed out mist. It was a night of ice like claws, like stalagmites and stalactites, like freezing water sheeting down from the sky for forty days; but as always, in a world of cold, there is warmth, and if not real warmth, then certainly the promise of it.

Crowley remembered the way his sodden dress and feathers had weighed him down, rendered him unable to fly, tied him to the Ark with no physical chains, but he’d scraped his wrists raw fighting them just the same. He remembered looking down at the dying Earth, looking down from the highest level of the Ark, from a perch where there was nothing higher, and he remembered climbing back down, unable to quench the fire of sudden comparisons to Heaven despite the rain soaking everything around him.

Heaven was above the world, above everything, because where else could it be? Sometimes it seemed to Crowley that Heaven spent so much time looking down at the world, they forgot how small one could feel just by looking up. The only reason the view didn’t humble the demons of Hell was that, well, the demons of Hell didn’t like to look up anyway. Which meant the vast view of the sky was  _ theirs, _ was Crowley’s, was Aziraphale’s; it marked their position on their own side: the only side that could stop and look up, not at Heaven, but at the  _ sky, _ at the infinite openness of it, and feel as though they belonged. 

Crowley liked to take Aziraphale on long drives at night, out into the middle of nowhere, which ended up being the middle of everywhere if they really thought about it. They would find themselves in fields and on piers, watching the stars, and Aziraphale wouldn’t ask about Raphael or making the universe, but Crowley would still answer his questions, because Crowley couldn’t  _ not _ answer questions—but sooner or later, the night would wrap them in silence, and Aziraphale would wrap Crowley in his arms, and as the stars kissed the edges of the clouds high above, an angel and a demon kissed just as slowly, just as gently, because what were they if not made of stars and clouds themselves?

He thought about Rome, then, and the cold glances, the cold hands that hardly dared to brush against him, the cold nights and cold days, the kind of cold that had nothing to do with temperature at all. He thought about Aziraphale and the way all the warmth detached from wherever it had been to follow him around, starry-eyed and yearning, and how Crowley, as a being of fire, had done the exact same thing. Aziraphale had seemed oblivious to all of it. He thought about the taste of oysters and wine, and the way he’d imagined Aziraphale would taste for millenia, and the way Aziraphale actually tasted, like laughter and music and sunlight, sunlight, sunlight.

The warmth still followed Aziraphale around, but now the angel held up mirrors to redirect some of it back out into the world, to redirect some of it back into Crowley in hopes that he would stop shivering. It hadn’t taken him long to take the frostbitten demon and pull him into the orbit of warmth, and Crowley, like a planet in orbit around a star, had no intention of fighting gravity. He snuggled closer to Aziraphale under the blankets and looped his arms around the angel’s middle, smiling into the nape of his neck because, by what could’ve been fate or chance or something in between, his arms were just the right length to fit perfectly around Aziraphale, and always had been.

The sleeping angel seemed to sense his demon’s closeness, and his warmth returned Crowley’s embrace while Aziraphale himself could not.

Crowley, breathing in the scent of Aziraphale’s hair, remembered cold suits of armor and cold foggy marshes, cold looks and cold rejection, and remembered sitting cold and alone that night after interacting with the angel in Wessex, shaking cold water out of his boots and thinking that armor didn’t always have to be metal plates and helmets. 

Aziraphale, though he’d eventually lost the outfit, continued to be a knight in shining armor for Crowley, saving him from himself in every possible situation. While it had often been Crowley rescuing Aziraphale from literal dangers, like the guillotine and the Nazis, Aziraphale was the one who drew Crowley back from his own personal guillotines every day, with his soft words, his slow kisses, his warmth, his warmth, his warmth. There was something Crowley would never admit to Aziraphale (sober, at least. He might admit it while he was drunk), and that was this: every time he’d rescued the angel, it had been an act of pure selfishness. Yes, it had been  _ I want you to be okay, _ but it had also been  _ I want you to be okay because I can’t be okay without you. _

__ Crowley saved Aziraphale when things endangered Aziraphale. Aziraphale saved Crowley when Crowley endangered himself, when he got a little too quiet or a little too still, when he didn’t laugh quite as loud and when he said nothing was wrong.  _ Something’s always wrong, _ he reminded himself, and it was true. They were an angel and a demon,  _ made _ to notice the wrongs in the world, the wrongs in each others’ former sides, the wrongs in each other (although, Crowley thought, they’d failed on that last front. Rather miserably, in fact). If he said nothing was wrong, that had to mean something was much more wrong than usual, that somehow the wind from outside had penetrated the cocoon of warmth and love Aziraphale had around him and was making him cold, cold, cold.

Now it came time to address that Crowley hated the cold. He always had. Heaven had been warm, had been full of stars and angels who loved to watch him make them, and Hell had been, well… Hell. Falling had been hot, fire, burning him and everything around him, but you could ice skate on the road to Hell, and Crowley had never had very good balance. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d found himself shivering in some dark corner, yearning to be back on Earth, under the sunlight and next to his angel again; even before he’d been allowed to hug and kiss Aziraphale, just being around him was enough to warm Crowley right to his core. 

The warmth never went away, either, even after they’d been living together ever since the Nahpocalypse. Every morning Crowley woke up and leaned over to kiss his angel on the cheek, and received a warm smile in return; every mealtime Crowley reached across the table to lace their fingers, and the touch warmed his freezer-burned soul; every lazy afternoon Crowley snaked his way between Aziraphale’s arms, let the angel’s book settle on his back, and napped in the warmth of his calm breathing; every night, Crowley kissed his angel and curved to fit against his back, curved to soak up all of his warmth, and Aziraphale never seemed to run out or grow cold. 

Crowley, who had always asked too many questions, could only last so long before he had to ask about the warmth, too. Aziraphale had beamed at him, shooting sunlight into Crowley’s veins, and said:  _ my dear, I love you, so I will never be cold again, _ and Crowley’s blood outsang all of Heaven’s choirs, his smile hurt his face, his body wanted to melt, and he barely managed to stumble giddily into Aziraphale’s open arms to kiss him soundly, to whisper against his mouth that  _ angel, my angel, I’m never letting you go, _ to drink in Aziraphale’s answering hum of  _ yes, yes, yes, I am your angel, _ and Crowley had to check to make sure he hadn’t risen because he felt like heaven again, because this angel—this warm, soft, gorgeous angel— _ loved him, loved him, loved him. _

__ He thought about Hamlet, then, and the cold of the empty theatre, the cold voice of the actor, the cold of the coin in his hand, the cold of  _ he’s not my friend, we don’t even know each other, _ the cold way the words  _ that’s a lie and you know it _ stuck to his tongue like ice. But Hamlet hadn’t been as cold as their past encounters, because Aziraphale had smiled at him, because Aziraphale agreed with him, because  _ they were getting along _ and  _ that was warm enough for Crowley. _

__ He thought about the Bastille, the cold of the guillotine, the cold French accents and cold halls and bars of the prison, the cold scent of the fear that seemed to be layered like a cake. But Aziraphale’s voice had shaped his name with warmth in each syllable, and he’d turned and regarded Crowley with a flash of light before the situation eclipsed it, and that singular ray of light twined itself through Crowley’s ribs and pulled tight. That light remained there for the rest of eternity, in case anyone bothered to keep track: a golden ribbon threaded through a silhouette of a man like the lifeline it was.

Crowley listened to Aziraphale’s breathing for a while, and ended up listening to everything else too: the snowy wind outside, the rush of cars and buses on the street, their heartbeats, constant, constant, constant, reminding Crowley that not only had they survived Heaven and Hell, but now they had the chance to keep on living. His thumb found itself tracing circles on Aziraphale’s stomach, and he placed a kiss on the back of the angel’s head, pressing his nose and chin into his loose curls, and he whispered a secret  _ I love you _ there, an  _ I love you _ that it didn’t matter if Aziraphale heard, because what mattered was that Crowley had said it. 

It had taken time for Crowley, frozen solid, to thaw enough to say those three words without ice piercing his throat, and once he’d managed it for the first time, he’d just begun to melt, and now he made a point to say it as much as possible, because yes, Aziraphale could feel his love, but Crowley wanted to voice it, to distance himself as much as he could from the lonely darkness and cold of Hell. Each  _ I love you _ was an ember, and slowly but surely, he relit his internal fire.

He thought about 1862, and the blizzard of fury and panic in Aziraphale as he read the note Crowley had written, the cold bite of  _ fraternizing, _ the cold breeze that came from Aziraphale’s too-quick retreat from his side, the withdrawal of his warmth, the cold that came with uncertainty and not knowing why the angel had reacted the way he did. It wasn’t like he thought Crowley wanted to use the holy water on  _ himself, _ was it? He’d gone even colder then, because that was probably exactly what Aziraphale thought. He’d considered following the angel, but when he tried to move, he found his legs frozen in place. 

He thought of 1941, and the cold, stiff-postured Nazis, the cold colors of the darkened church, the cold fear that Aziraphale was still angry with him. 1941 had been interesting, Crowley mused, nuzzling Aziraphale’s neck, because that had been the interaction that hadn’t been cold, really; it had been hot, almost an inferno, and that was just as bad as the ice. 

It had been hot like a wayward bomb and an exploding church, like the fire on the wings of the statue behind Aziraphale, like the burns on his feet, hot like the way the air crackled around Aziraphale, seemed to implode, when Crowley handed him the bag of books. Crowley hadn’t known precisely at the time, but when he drew his hand back after handing over the books, he’d been holding Aziraphale’s heart as well. He hadn’t known until after the Nahpocalypse, but from 1941 onward, he and Aziraphale were balanced again: they each possessed one heart. The only catch was that it wasn’t their own. 

Sure, Crowley thought, trailing his hand up Aziraphale’s chest to place his palm on the angel’s beating heart, they hadn’t exactly exchanged the actual muscles, but they were more than just their bodies. Crowley wondered if the reason he was so cold all the time was because of the absence of his heart in his chest for all of those years; it had been forcefully wrenched from him by a distressed angel on the wall of Eden, and he’d never gotten it back. The only time he felt warm, as far back as he could remember, was when he was around Aziraphale. 

He thought about 1967, and the cold of the empty Bentley, the cold of the thermos in his hand, the cold of  _ oh, I’m never getting my heart back, am I?  _ The cold of  _ you go too fast for me, _ the cold of the tears running down his cheeks, the cold of his bedsheets as he collapsed onto them after barely managing to stagger into his flat, the cold of the certainty that he’d never be warm again.

He thought about the night they’d stayed at his flat, and the cold of his emotions pressing all up against the makeshift walls, held together at this point by nothing but force of will and glitter glue, the cold of the glacier cracking down to nothing as everything poured out of him, the  _ I need you, _ the  _ I’ve been in love with you since Eden, _ the  _ you’re everything to me, _ the  _ I invented touch-starved, angel, I need this, I need this, I need this, _ and Aziraphale’s response had been warm in a way that nothing else could be. He’d opened his arms, smiled, and had said everything with no words at all. He’d said  _ I’m here, take what you need, I’m not going away: _ the promise Crowley had needed for six thousand years.

The warmth had never left, through that night and every night after. Crowley had clung to Aziraphale, had wrapped around him, shivering and pressing closer like a child who’d spent the entire day outside in the snow and now sat bundled in front of a fire. He’d buried his face in Aziraphale’s hair, his neck, his stomach, and let Aziraphale’s fingers trace his spine and thread through his hair, directing rivers of sunshine across his skin.

Crowley thought about the cold stress they’d been submerged in while fighting Armageddon, the cold tension of their former sides, the cold distance between them growing, the cold heartbreak, passing like the dappled shadows under Crowley’s feet as he fled the bandstand and Aziraphale’s cold words. He’d been cold from then until the bus ride after the Nahpocalypse, where he’d turned to Aziraphale, turned with his hopes and dreams bared, and said  _ we’re on our own side.  _ And only when Aziraphale agreed with him did the sun begin to peek out from behind his endless winter. 

_ Our side. _ What did that mean, exactly? Were there rules for being on a side? Crowley knew it meant no more paperwork, for starters, and that he didn’t have to look over his shoulder when he met with Aziraphale, but… what made a side? The definition of the word, in this particular context, went:  _ a person or group opposing another or others in a dispute, contest, or debate; _ Crowley didn’t really think he and Aziraphale were opposing anyone anymore. Typically, to oppose something, you ought to take a stance against it, and they were just trying to avoid any interaction with Heaven or Hell at all.

Crowley snuggled even closer to Aziraphale, maneuvering his ankle between Aziraphale’s, thinking that maybe  _ our side _ didn’t have to mean there were any other sides to fight; maybe it just meant they would have each other’s backs through eternity—which made him wonder if they’d been on their own side all along.

“You’re very cuddly tonight, you dear old serpent,” Aziraphale said sleepily, turning slightly to look over his shoulder at Crowley, who ambushed him with a kiss on the nose, causing them both to giggle.

“Jus’ thinking, angel.”

“About what, my love?” 

“Warm. ‘N cold. Like warm better, though.”

“Of course,” murmured Aziraphale, eyes still closed. Crowley cupped his angel’s beautiful round face in his hands and closed the short distance between their lips, tasting him and trying not to cry from sheer happiness when he felt Aziraphale’s arms encircle him with the utmost gentleness, holding him as though he deserved to be held. He tried to grin and keep kissing Aziraphale at the same time, and it didn’t work very well.

“Love you,” he said.

“I love you too, my dear.” Aziraphale rolled all the way over to face Crowley, pressing the entire perfect expanse of his front against Crowley’s, and Crowley was warm and loved and safe, safe, safe. 

“You’re warm,” Crowley sighed, reconnecting his lips to Aziraphale’s, reconnecting his soul to the Earth; he threaded one hand into Aziraphale’s cloudlike curls of hair and slung his legs around the angel’s hips. This action wasn’t viewed as seductive or sexual by either man-shaped being; it was simply Crowley trying to be as close to Aziraphale as possible (and maybe nodding a little bit to his serpentine history). 

“I’m warm? Are you cold, dearest?”

“Nah. Not. Not temperature cold,” Crowley attempted to explain. “Cold like lonely. Cold like Hell. Cold like giving up. You’re warm. Warm like snuggles. Books. Sunshine. Love.” He choked a bit on the last word, but if Aziraphale noticed he didn’t seem to mind. “‘S why I’m so clingy, angel. Never had warmth, yaknow, before.”

Aziraphale cradled Crowley close to him and kissed his ear, then his forehead, then his cheekbone, his nose, his lips. 

“My  _ dear,” _ he said, pressing his forehead to the demon’s. “I love you so very much.”

“Love you too.” Crowley’s heart still found a way to skip when he heard the words, but he managed not to show it. It was a wonder, he thought, that he’d made it this far with his heart still beating. 

“I just want to make sure you know that your clinginess is never going to be a problem, Crowley. I love you. I love how you cuddle up to me in your sleep.” Aziraphale smiled, warm, warm, warm, and tilted Crowley’s face up to kiss him again, and Crowley  _ melted, _ because  _ they could do this now, _ without worrying about Heaven and Hell or fear of ruining their friendship. He felt the grin growing on his face and answered Aziraphale’s question before he asked it.

“I’m jus’ so  _ happy, _ angel. Can love you now. Can  _ kiss _ you—” he kissed him “—n’ we don’t have to worry about Gabriel, n’ I don’t have to keep track of little things that might have gave me away.”

_ “Given, _ my dear, dear, grammatically impaired boy.” Aziraphale laughed, planting another kiss on Crowley’s mouth. And then another, because nobody was stopping them. “Little things like what?”

Crowley thought about it, the cold of the few inches he had to leave between them, the cold blast of realizing he’d left his hand on Aziraphale’s arm or back just a second too long, the cold of biting his tongue to avoid _ just saying I love you at any point in their conversation. _ The cold of fleeing back to his flat and trying not to pull out his hair because Aziraphale had surely noticed, surely knew how Crowley felt, and now he hated him, because everyone did eventually; pulling out his hair in desperate attempts at pulling out that voice in his head, the voice that reminded him how much it would  _ hurt, _ Aziraphale hating him.

But Aziraphale  _ didn’t _ hate him, which may have been the best miracle of all, ranking above swapped bodies and bags of prophecy books. Aziraphale didn’t hate him, and maybe those icicles hanging from the top of his existence could melt, and when they did, they dripped stardust. Crowley knew he wasn’t that perfect, but Aziraphale stayed with him anyway, and that was what eventually allowed him to accept himself the way he was; he wasn’t perfect, but certainly nobody was better at being Crowley than he was, and that had to count for something.

“Little things,” he finally answered. “Doesn’t matter now, cause I can do them all.”

He kissed his angel again.

Aziraphale turned back over, and Crowley fitted himself to the gentle curving shape of his back, and they fell asleep together, in their own world of warm silence despite the chaotic, wintery world around them.

There was snow outside, cold wind and cold moonlight, and cold-hearted people jostling each other on the cold sidewalks as they breathed in malice and breathed out mist. But Crowley didn’t shiver anymore, because he had warmth no cold could conquer. He had Aziraphale. And he had the certainty that, no matter how bleak everything sometimes seemed, no winter could last forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!! Comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> Actual note: You may have noticed the way I repeated some words three times. There’s a reason for that other than writing style/tone, and it’s what made me add the tag ‘symbolism.’ The number three has connection to divine protection and guidance. Considering the story of an angel and a demon in love, I couldn’t resist including a bit of that. :) 
> 
> You don’t have to read this next bit if you don’t want to; it’s the songs and lyrics I referenced (intentionally! Maybe there are more accidental references XD) during the fic, and the lines where I referenced them:
> 
> “‘Something’s always wrong,’ he reminded himself...” references Something’s Always Wrong, by Toad the Wet Sprocket (yes, that’s... the name of a band. They’re good. Check them out if you want!) The entire song is pretty relevant to this fic and Good Omens entirely! 
> 
> “Aziraphale beamed at him, shooting sunlight into Crowley’s veins” references 27 by Fall Out Boy, particularly this lyric: “and I want it so bad I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins” 
> 
> “But now they had the chance to keep on living” references Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance, particularly “I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone.” I really like this song, and there’s relevance to this fic if you squint and more relevance to just some outlooks on Crowley in general.
> 
> “They were more than just their bodies” references In The End by Black Veil Brides, particularly the lyrics: “who we are is not how we live, we are more than our bodies, if I fall, I will rise back up and relive my glory.” I love this song too, but it’s not the most relevant to this fic. 
> 
> “Crowley knew he wasn’t that perfect, but Aziraphale stayed with him...” is a reference to When You Can’t Sleep At Night by Of Mice and Men, and the lyric goes “I know I’m not that perfect, baby stay awhile, maybe then you will see.” I think this is a really sweet song and the title/theme of it is pretty relevant.


End file.
